We will also be holding our usual Shop Talk as well as a
breakfast
with the BAAS WN.

We'll be in touch!

CALL FOR PAPERS

the 32nd European Association for American Studies and 63rd
British
Association for American Studies Conference

Please submit proposals, along with a brief CV and email address
for
each participant, to ebaas2018@baas.ac.uk by the deadline of 1
October
2017.

4 – 7 April 2018
King’s College London, University College London, and the
British Library

Proposals are welcomed on any subject in American Studies. The
overarching themes for the conference are ENVIRONMENT, PLACE and
PROTEST, and we particularly welcome submissions in these areas,
broadly defined. The conference will also be an opportunity to
reflect
on the fiftieth anniversary of the turbulent events of 1968 and
their
impact on the United States, and Europe.

Please note the following:

Given the size and scope of the conference, we will give
preference to
fully formed panel proposals, but will also accept individual
paper
proposals where possible.
All sessions at the conference will be a maximum of 1 hour 30
minutes.
Proposals for panels should therefore consist of no more than
three
speakers, or, if more speakers are desired, should be conceived
as
roundtable discussions.
All individual paper proposals should be for 20-minute
presentations.
BAAS and EAAS are dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity
and
inclusion. We strongly encourage and will give preference to
panels
that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender,
ethnicity,
sexual orientation, and institutional affiliation. All-male
panel
proposals will not be accepted.
Equipment for the projection of PowerPoint presentations will be
available in all rooms.

Paper proposals should be 250 words maximum, including a title.
Panel
proposals should include a 250-word abstract for each
constituent
paper as well as an abstract of no more than 250 words
describing the
panel session as a whole. Please submit proposals, along with a
brief
CV and email address for each participant, to
ebaas2018@baas.ac.uk by
the deadline of 1 October 2017.

As Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan convey in their seminal text
An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational
World (2001/2005), “transnational feminist studies is not a
luxury that is added to the end of a syllabus or that can be
relegated to one week out of the semester or quarter” (xvii). A
mode of thinking in American Studies scholarship for over a
decade, transnationalism should be integrated into all
contemporary feminist discourse—whether through academic
writing, in the classroom setting, or within the realm of
activism—so that important questions are asked, and answered,
about “ethnocentrism, racism, and nationalist viewpoints as
foundation[s] to gender identity and issues of sexuality”
(xvii). Unlike certain threads of global feminism, which espouse
a “world-wide alliance of women,” invariably lapsing into the
same tropes of condescension, paternalism, and cultural
imperialism found in preceding feminist movements, transnational
feminism represents a paradigm shift away from
orientalist and colonial discourses that prioritize “the West”
and that marginalize the social, cultural and historical
contexts with which women struggle elsewhere in the world. Thus,
transnational feminism signals a movement towards
examining how “western” countries, such as the United States,
are, for better or worse, implicated in global issues that
impact women’s lives and how these issues can be broached.

“It may now be time,” as Susan Koshy cautions us in her 2008
response to Ali Behdad in American Literary History (vol.
20.1-2), “to think carefully about whether feminism travels well
across borders, not because distances are as great as they were
in the past, but precisely because they are alleged to have
shrunk.” According to Koshy, “Transnational feminism, at the
best of times a precarious project that negotiates neoliberal
universalism, cultural relativism, asymmetrical knowledge flows,
the demand for authenticity, and its own commodification, may be
short-circuited by its mediatization. These shifts invite us to
reflect on the possibility or impossibility of transnational
feminism in our time” (302–303). Such a reconceptualization or
rethinking has become all the more urgent as women’s rights,
access to health care, and social and political spaces are being
placed in jeopardy with rising global conservatism. Examining
the women’s movement (past, present, and future) in a
transnational way underscores the necessity and continued
importance of feminism and feminist concerns.

The European Association for American Studies Women’s Network
invites the submission of individual abstracts and panels
which incorporate transdisciplinary explorations of
transnational feminism(s) and welcomes submissions from any
branch of American Studies. Possible themes include, but are not
limited to:

●What has transnational feminism accomplished so
far? What still needs to be done? What are its lessons and
limits?

●Teaching transnational feminism in the US or in an
American Studies program beyond US borders

●The politics of transnational feminism in
European/American academia

●Transnational feminist narratives, literature and
theory

●Is there a transnational feminist “canon” within
American Studies?

●How do US-centric viewpoints exclude other
types/definitions of feminism?

●How do we define American feminism(s) and
understand its impact on other nations?

●The collaboration between American feminists and
non-American feminists (i.e., feminists organizing across
borders)

●The historical and literary roots/routes of
American transnational feminism

●Comparative approaches that include the United
States

Proposals should be sent to the
EAAS Women’s Network (eaaswomensnetwork@gmail.com)
and should consist of a 300-400 word abstract in English, as
well as a one-paragraph biography for each participant. The time
allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10
minutes will be provided for discussion.

Deadline for proposal submission: December 15, 2016.

Presenters will be invited to submit full-text articles
(5,000-8,000 words) for possible inclusion in the inaugural
issue of our e-journal, WiN: The
EAAS Women’s Network Journal

PAST CONFERENCES

CFP: First Biennial EAAS Women’s
Network Symposium

The State of the Nation: American Women in the Twenty-First
Century
Marie Curie-Skłodowska University
Lublin, Poland
Friday, March 27, 2015